Add on accessories are known and used with bows to provide additional functionality to allow bows to be used for specialized purposes. For example, it is known to provide a bow assembly with a reel that is mounted onto the bow. A line is attached to the arrow and can be fired at a target such as a fish. Upon striking the fish, the hunter can actuate the reel to draw in the line, arrow and fish. Although suitable for the hunting of fish, such a bow attachment may be undesirable when hunting larger game such as alligators. In this regard, a hunter may not want the reel and subsequently his or her bow attached to a line that is in turn attached to an alligator. A wounded alligator may still have sufficient strength to pull the bow from the grasp of the hunter thus depriving him or her of the bow.
Bow attachments are also known that include a spool onto which line is wound. The spool has mounting brackets that can be taped onto the bow in order to effect attachment between these two components. The spool has an axis that points generally towards the direction of flight of the arrow. The line is wound around an outer surface of the spool and the end of the spool is provided with a lip that prevents the line from sliding off of the outer surface of the spool. The spool has a hollow interior through which the arrow may be fired. The line is attached to the bow or to the spool and firing of the arrow causes the line to be unwound from the spool. As the line is attached to the spool or bow, pulling by the alligator may cause the bow to be pulled from the grasp of the user. Additionally, the lip on the outer surface of the end of the spool impedes the unwinding of the line from the spool which in turn induces a wobble into the arrow during flight. As the hide of an alligator is extremely thick, wobble of the arrow is undesirable in that it may not squarely strike the alligator and hence may not penetrate the hide of the alligator. As such, there remains room for variation and improvement in the art.
Repeat use of reference characters in the present specification and drawings is intended to represent the same or analogous features or elements of the invention.